Comin’ Through

If electricity is manufactured in one place, say, the Columbia River via hydroelectric dam, and used in another place, say, Seattle, you will need to sting wires from the dam to Seattle. The same fact holds true for oil and natural gas pipelines.

But that means possibly crossing through hundreds of miles of forest land to get from Point A to Point B. The passage is nowadays called an Energy Corridor.

Energy Corridors are allowed to bypass some of the enviro-laws because the need is greater than the risks.

And if ever there was proof that the eco-cultists want us to return back to the bronze age, this story is it.

The McNary Wildlife Refuge is a system of sloughs and mudflats near where the Columbia and Snake rivers meet in southeastern Washington. It’s home to bald eagles, endangered peregrine falcons and thousands of migrating shorebirds.

Someday, it also may be next door to a new string of electricity towers or underground pipelines delivering more energy to the West.

Next month, the federal government will unveil a proposal to dedicate thousands of miles of federal land in the West as a network of utility corridors, where energy companies in the future could locate new transmission towers or pipelines for oil, gas and hydrogen.

Most will be in places already home to gas lines or electricity lines.

But some may be three-quarters of a mile wide, cutting across undisturbed terrain or through national parks, scenic areas or wildlife-rich lands. An early draft suggests one might run alongside the McNary refuge.

Some government officials, environmentalists and tribal leaders fear the proposal could ultimately disrupt sensitive landscapes and expose some of the West’s most distinctive places to pipeline explosions or fuel spills.

“Alarm bells are ringing on some of these corridors,” said Ivan Maluski, conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club in Oregon.

“Alarm”. They are more afraid for their Green Speckled Sand Mites than they are about making sure there is electricity to the homes and businesses in the urban and suburban areas of the state.

They would rather we sit in the dark than disturb the Red Spotted Field Mice, who are actually only dying out because of the lack of control on the Coyote population, thanks to their lobbying of some unknown state congressman.

So now we have no drilling for new oil, anywhere, and no new refineries either, no looking for new sources of natural gas, most everywhere, no building dams for their fuel free generation of electricity because the salmon get confused and no building of nuclear power plants because well, just because.

As a dirtbike rider I’ve been exposed to this insanity from the beginning, and it’s also what separates many of the streetbike guys from the dirtbike crowd – more street-riders consider themselves environmentally aware and “green” – they just want their cake and eat it too, and more so since their world is all asphalt – oil and gas.